The Institute for Law Teaching and Learning invites proposals for conference workshops on techniques for teaching law practice across the law school curriculum. The Institute’s summer conference provides a forum for dedicated teachers to share with colleagues innovative ideas and effective methods for modern legal education.

The Institute invites proposals for 75-minute workshops consistent with a broad interpretation of the conference theme, “Teaching Law Practice Across the Curriculum.” The workshops can address teaching and learning in first-year courses, upper-level courses, clinical courses, writing courses, and academic support. The workshops can deal with innovative materials, alternative teaching methods, ways to enhance student learning, formative feedback to students, evaluation of student performance, etc. Each workshop should include materials that participants can use during the workshop and when they return to their campuses. Presenters should not read papers, but should model effective teaching methods by actively engaging the participants. The co-directors would be glad to work with anyone who would like advice in designing their presentations to be interactive.

To be considered for the conference, proposals must be limited to one page, single-spaced, and include the following:

· The title of the workshop;

· The name, address, phone number, and email address of the presenter(s); and

· A summary of the contents of the workshop, including its goals and methods.

The conference is self-supporting. The conference fee for participants is $450, which includes materials and meals during the conference (two breakfasts, two lunches, and one dinner). The conference fee for presenters is $200. Pleasant and reasonable accommodations are available near Washburn University School of Law, the site of the conference. Presenters and participants must cover their own travel and accommodation expenses. The conference workshops will take place on June 17 and 18.

Jordan Bailey, Comment, Giving State Courts the Ol' Slip: Should a Defendant be Allowed to Remove an Otherwise Irremovable Case to Federal Court Solely Because Removal Was Made Before any Defendant Is Served? 42 Tex. Tech. L. Rev. 181 (2009)

At issue is whether some of the factual findings of a 2006 state court verdict in favor of a plaintiff can be applied to around 4000 cases pending in federal court. The Fulton County Daily Report provides a good account of the issues and the oral argument, including the arguments of attorney and law professor Samuel Issacharoff.

A dysfunctional judicial system in which bribes are welcome, rather than banned or frowned upon, is difficult to imagine, particularly in light of the prohibitions placed on such conduct in the United States. And yet just such a system is currently in place in Ukraine.One of the factors likely contributing to the corrupt nature of Ukraine’s judiciary is the lack of a jury trial system; Ukraine has never had a single criminal or civil jury trial despite the fact that the right to a jury trial, at least in criminal cases, is guaranteed by its Constitution. This Article argues that Ukraine can and should make room for juries in its judicial system and provides a framework for both criminal and civil jury trial implementation. Although the use of juries will not remedy all the problems plaguing Ukraine, it can bring this country closer to achieving a truly democratic form of government. Additionally, other former Soviet Republics, especially those that closely resemble Ukraine in terms of their economic, political, and cultural characteristics, could learn and benefit from Ukraine’s example in this respect.The implementation of jury trials in Ukraine is particularly important because this country, “once considered a worldwide symbol of an emerging, free-market democracy that had cast off authoritarianism, is teetering. And its predicament poses a real threat for other European economies and former Soviet republics.” Ukraine - widely considered “a linchpin for stability in Europe” - has a population of “46 million people and a highly strategic location a collapse in Ukraine could wreck what little investor confidence is left in Eastern Europe, whose formerly robust economies are being badly strained.” Further, governmental problems in Ukraine could “cause neighboring Russia, which has close ethnic and linguistic ties to eastern and southern Ukraine, to try to inject itself into the country’s affairs. What is more, the Kremlin would be able to hold up Ukraine as an example of what happens when former Soviet republics follow a Western model of free-market democracy.” Introducing a jury trial framework in Ukraine - particularly one that is more effective than that currently being used in Russia - will aid in the legitimization of the Ukrainian government and court system, thereby helping to stabilize the presently tumultuous relationship between Ukrainian citizens and their government.

NYU School of Law will host a conference on "The Roberts Court: A View from the Supreme Court Bar and the Academy." The program is sponsored by the Dwight D. Opperman Institute of Judicial Administration, and will be on Friday, February 19, 2010 from 10:00 a.m. until noon. For more information, including a list of participants and registration information (registration is free), click here.

The Florida Coastal School of Law is seeking applicants for permanent, full-time faculty positions. They have a particular need for those interested in teaching Civil Procedure (as well as Estates & Trusts and Environmental Law). Anyone interested in being considered should forward a cover letter, resume, and list of references to the Chair of the Faculty Appointments Committee, Professor Cynthia Irvin, at cirvin@fcsl.edu.

Preemption of common law remedies for individual injuries such as harm
to health raises fundamental questions about the proper allocation of
authority between the federal and state governments and about the role
of courts in interpreting statutes and providing remedies for those who
suffer injuries. Developing a workable framework for analyzing what we
call “remedial preemption” issues can help to ensure an appropriate
accommodation of the federal and state interests at stake and promote
consistent application of preemption doctrine to state judicial
remedies.

This
article applies a “collective action” framework for preemption analysis
to the issue of remedial preemption. Our analysis suggests that while
remedial preemption may be justified in some cases, courts should not
lightly infer remedial preemption unless: (1) a primary purpose of the
federal law is to ensure uniform standards to promote free movement of
goods, prevent the export of regulatory burdens by “downstream” states,
or solve a not-in-my-backyard problem; and (2) there is strong evidence
that state judicial remedies (as opposed to direct state regulation
through legislation or the actions of administrative agencies) would
interfere with the achievement of those goals. In addition, we conclude
that preemption of one common law cause of action does not necessarily
warrant preemption of different causes of action for remediation of the
same injury. Finally, we argue that courts should be especially
reluctant to read the preemptive effect of federal law so as to leave
injured persons without any remedy whatsoever. In doing so we pay
particular attention to the ways in which state judicial remedies
differ from state regulation by means of statutes or administrative
rules, including the differences between legislatures and courts,
between legislative rules and judicial decisions, and among possible
preemptive effects on judicial remedies. We conclude by analyzing how
the Supreme Court’s 2009 holding in Wyeth v. Levine that state tort
remedies based on failure-to-warn claims were not preempted by federal
regulation of the content of warning labels for drugs comports with our
analysis.

I've been guest-blogging over at Concurring Opinions, and I have a few posts discussing how courts ought to make sense of federal pleading standards after Ashcroft v. Iqbal, what lower courts are actually doing, and the bills now pending in Congress to legislatively override Iqbal. Here are the links to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

These posts summarize and build on some of the arguments in my article, The Pleading Problem, 62 Stanford L. Rev. ___ (forthcoming May 2010), the latest draft of which is up on SSRN. Here's the abstract:

Federal pleading standards are in crisis. The Supreme Court's recent decisions in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal have the potential to upend civil litigation as we know it. What is urgently needed is a theory of pleading that can bring Twombly and Iqbal into alignment with the text of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and a half-century worth of Supreme Court precedent, while providing a coherent methodology that preserves access to the courts and allows pleadings to continue to play their appropriate role in the adjudicative process. This article provides that theory. It develops a new paradigm -- plain pleading -- as an alternative to both notice pleading (which the pre-Twombly era was widely understood to endorse) and plausibility pleading (which many read Twombly and Iqbal to endorse). As a functional matter, this new paradigm is largely consistent with notice pleading, but it stands on firmer textual footing and avoids some of the conceptual problems that arise when notice is the exclusive frame of reference. Moreover, it is able to reconcile Twombly and Iqbalwith pre-Twombly authority.

A careful reading of Twombly and Iqbal undermines the conventional wisdom that they require a stricter approach to pleading. First, Twombly and Iqbaldid not overrule the most significant pre-Twombly authorities. The only aspect of prior case law that these decisions set aside was a misunderstood 50-year-old phrase whose real meaning was never called into question. Furthermore, Iqbal's two-step analysis confirms that the problematic plausibility standard employed in Twombly and Iqbalis neither the primary inquiry at the pleadings phase nor a necessary one. The threshold issue is whether a crucial allegation in a complaint may be disregarded as "conclusory"; then and only then does the "plausibility" of an entitlement relief become dispositive. While there remains some uncertainty about what conclusory means, authoritative pre-Twombly sources -- the Federal Rules, their Forms, and Supreme Court decisions that remain good law -- foreclose any definition that would give courts drastic new powers to disregard allegations at the pleadings phase.